REMEMBER
Resilience Reflected in Adaptability By Pi Beta Phi Historian and Archivist, FRAN DESIMONE BECQUE , New York Alpha
With the announcement of the 73rd biennial Convention moving to a virtual format this coming June, an organizational history dating back nearly 154 years provides insight and comfort as to how Pi Beta Phi handles such a departure from normalcy. Take, for instance, the difference between the 1940 Convention in Pasadena, California, and the following convention, six tumultuous years later in Swampscott, Massachusetts. During the Pasadena Convention, business ran as usual. The nearly 1,000 Pi Phis who attended the festivities at the Huntington Hotel mixed fun with the serious work of the Fraternity, as is typical at a Pi Phi event. FANNIE WHITENACK LIBBEY was an honored guest, the final time a founder attended convention, so it was fitting that the restoration of Holt House was one of the legislative items on the agenda. In conducting the business of the Fraternity, the convention was not without its share of contention, including an episode known as the
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Incorporation Challenge (read more about this event on pages 307-311 in "A Century of Friendship in Pi Beta Phi"). When the banquet ended and the Pi Phis said their farewells, could any of them have predicted it would be another six years before they would convene again? In that six-year timespan, the effects of World War II pushed the world into anything but normalcy, from the warfront to the home front. Life changed quickly and drastically, including campus life, as male students joined the armed forces and headed to military service. The war and its ramifications also touched the lives of Pi Phi’s membership. Ever the servant leaders, Pi Phi collegians and alumnae gave more than six million hours of service to the war effort. And as with all challenges, the Fraternity and its members had the opportunity to look at things differently and deal with them in new ways, exercising their resilience in the face of strife.
